


Artificial Happiness

by hailstac



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-03-18 21:02:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3583854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hailstac/pseuds/hailstac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She hates mysteries; he’s full of secrets and lies. She’s unsure if there’s anything worth fighting for; he returns from hell to fight for his city. To her, it doesn’t exist; to him, it’s the most powerful emotion. He’s The Arrow; she's right by his side (with Diggle, of course).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> I didn’t reread this. Of course, there will be grammatical errors. This is the start of a multi-chapter fic of an alternate Felicity; similar in some ways, but drastically different in others. Things won’t be exactly the same, especially dialogue-wise, because that’s annoying to read.
> 
> Like with most, it's a bit of a slow start.

_Oliver’s wide eyes were set on her expressionless face before following the motions of her hands separating and lowering at her sides._

_She pursed her lips, her head tilted slightly to the side in thought. “Hmm…” she murmured. “You know, I always wondered if I was capable of_ actually _doing it…” She shifted her eyes to meet Oliver’s still incredulous gaze. “Looks like curiosity killed the fucking maniac.”_

_“Felicity –“_

_“Can you move?” she asked._

_Her gaze moved carefully down his tall frame checking for the more severe injuries as she brought flipped the safety on the glock in her hand before stuffing it behind her back in the waistband of her jeans._

_“I think so,” he said wearily._

_“Good. Get up; we need to get Digg to the med bay.”_

_“Felicity,” he tried again as his ribs protested against his movement._

_“Let’s go.”_

\---

Human interaction made her uncomfortable; it was definitely not her strong suit. The idea of being around people and having to interact made her insides squirm and her anxiety skyrocket. Her body would shake, heart rate pick up, and her hands got clammy. But she wasn’t sure which she hated more; all the anxiety or the fact that when she started talking, she couldn’t stop. Being prone to making accidental innuendos and incessant babbling wasn’t something she was proud of.

Graduating from MIT with a Master’s degree at the age of 19 gave Felicity Smoak a huge opportunity to work at nearly any tech giant she wanted. The biggest corporations had fought for her until she settled down with Starling City-based Queen Consolidated soon after graduating. What she liked most was that she wasn’t just fixing computers but the newer CEO Walter Steele had singled her out for various projects of his. She wasn’t just doing her regular IT business but also working with the Applied Sciences Division of the company. It was her that Walter had sit in on the big head-honcho meetings and actually valued her opinion.

She had to admit, she liked working and she liked the work that she did. The eight or so hours a day she spent away from home, allowing her to focus her attention on something besides the TV made her feel useful. Although she did prefer being able to be at home in sweats or jeans and a big t-shirt rather than her professional looking dresses and heels. However, walking in heels and plastering fake smiles on her face had become second nature in the three, going on four, years she’d spent at the company.

Her chair in her cubicle in the IT Department of Queen Consolidated made her back sore. It was at times like these when she wished she purchased a few of the infomercial items see always saw on the late night TV. A butt cushion would probably work wonders for the eight hour days like today – one where they were so short-staffed she was stuck with the lower level issues.

The pain in her back and the noisy coworkers was ebbing along the headache she’d been trying to fight off since morning. She pulled her glasses off before setting her face in her hands and sighing in relief as the straining of her eyes momentarily disappeared. It was as she moved her hands from her face to rub her temple that she heard a new voice.

“Hi… Oh, I’m so sorry to have interrupted,” the voice said hesitantly.

She opened her eyes to see a man standing before her with an uncomfortable smile, his eyes trained on the screen of her computer. He looked familiar but she couldn’t quite place him.

She cocked her head to the side in confusion, both at finding someone at her desk and his “interruption”, and turned to see the pornography she was wiping from a higher-up’s system. “Ah, yes. I see you’ve come to see the greatest part of working in IT. Loads and loads of in-your-face porn and its viruses” Her cheeks flushing pink.

He let out a small laugh causing her to curse at herself before turning off the screen and putting her glasses back on. “Bad choice of words,” she muttered before taking a deep breath and putting a bright smile on her face and looking up. “How can I help you, sir?”

“I’m Oliver Queen.” Right, the face that’d been plastered all over the news networks as of late due to his epic return from being shipwrecked five years ago and heir to the Queen Consolidated throne – no pun intended, of course. Even the IT department, a generally quiet bunch, couldn’t help themselves from talking about it constantly. She was taken aback that she hadn’t realized who he was rather… instantly. “You’re Felicity Smoak, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Please, call me Oliver,” he smiled charmingly.

She nodded once, pushing her glasses up higher on the bridge of her nose. “Oliver,” she repeated, folding her hands together atop her desk.

“I’m having some computer trouble and Walter told me you were the one to see about that.” There was a brief flash of a genuine smile from Felicity at the mention of Walter. “I spilled a latte on it and I can’t seem to get it back up and running,” he continued, lifting said laptop into her field of vision.

Her brows furrowed; her intrigue turning into suspicion when she noticed the many holes. She pursed her lips and turned her attention back to him, his expression innocent as he handed her the laptop.

“Latte, huh?” she repeated slowly, fingering the rather obvious bullet holes.

“Yeah, bad neighborhood, you know? But I was hoping you could salvage what you could from it.”

She observed him quietly for a moment, her head tilting unconsciously out of habit as she did so. She bit her lip and nodded. She couldn’t really decline; he was the boss’ son, the heir to the Queen throne for god’s sake. But there was no way she wasn’t going to get to the bottom of this. A bullet-ridden laptop brought in by Oliver Queen himself? That’s a mystery wrapped in a bow set on her doorstep.

Hooking up the laptop to her company computer was no issue. Nor was the simple decryption algorithm of her own coding that she ran to break through any security. It was a fairly quick process but still kept her full attention. So much so that she hadn’t noticed Oliver siding up right next to her until she caught a glimpse of him leaning close to get a look at the screen causing her to startle and roll her own chair further in towards her desk and away from him.

He was unaware of her discomfort.

She wasn’t surprised at his confusion of what was on the screen. Obviously it wasn’t his laptop and along with being a terrible liar, his acting wasn’t very Oscar-worthy. Even a Razzie would be too generous.

But it was seeing the blueprints of the building where they were holding the Unidac Industries auction that she really started to question Oliver’s intentions with this information.

“Is this your way of trying to get back at your mom and Mr. Steele?” she couldn’t help but ask.

“What are you talking about?”

“Listen, I don’t want to get into the middle of your rather Shakespearean family drama. Way too many people tend to end up dead by the final act and I’m not counting on being one of those people – or Walter.“

“I’m not following you, Felicity.”

“These are the blueprints for where they’re holding the Unidac Industries auction, the Exchange Building. Mr. Steele is trying to purchase the subsidiary…” she trailed off at his blank look. “This laptop belongs to one of his competitors, Oliver.”

“Lawton,” he stated simply.

“Warren Patel,” she corrected. “Lawton?”

Felicity was beyond frustrated at this point. What kind of idiot did he take her for?

\-----

 

Later that night as she was sitting on her couch eating her dinner, the breaking news story interrupted.

“A shooting at the Exchange Building tonight has left at least two dead at the scene,” the news correspondent stated solemnly.

Behind her, the police could be seen ushering a group of screaming people out of the building. Felicity dropped her fork onto her plate in shock. Her first thought was to Walter, desperately hoping he wasn’t one of the fatalities. She pushed aside her plate grabbed her laptop from next to her, her fingers typing rapidly on the keyboard to hack into the CCTV feeds. Her attention deviated from between her laptop and her TV which still had a live stream of the outside of the building.

She let out a relieved breath at the image of someone pushing Walter out of the way of the bullet but flinched at the sight of it hitting the waiter. It hadn’t escaped her that she’d seen Oliver Queen walk away from Water just moments before. Was it entirely a coincidence, him stopping by her office earlier that day and then the shooting?

She followed his movements, switching cameras as she went. She saw him stop at his mother and little sister before running towards the emergency exit. To be rather honest, she wasn’t entirely surprised to not see him leave with his family and enter the neighboring building’s stairwell. She scrunched her face in annoyance as she watched him scale two, three steps at a time.

“Show off,” she muttered.

She had her finger ready to skip to the next camera when he suddenly stopped at a garbage bin, removing its lid and pulling out a rather military-looking bag.

If she had come to any conclusion in the ten hours that passed since he left her office, it wasn’t that she’d see him pulling out a dark colored piece of what looked like clothing from that bag and then continue to scale the steps to the top. That was the end of any sight she had on Oliver. She started working on scrubbing the feeds, removing the evidence of Oliver when she noticed another man running up the stairs with his handgun at the ready. It was the man that she saw with Oliver downstairs, the one who got Mrs. Queen and her daughter out of the building. He stopped at the open garbage bin before continuing his trek.

He, too, disappeared in the same spot Oliver had. As she worked on completely erasing them both, she had the live-time feed of the last camera opened on her tablet so she’d see them out. She crossed her fingers that she’d see them both walk out that door fully intact.

It was several minutes later when she saw a man in dark leather and a hood covering his face walking a doubled-over man back into the stairwell before going out to the roof. She was still working on the stairwell CCTV circuits and didn’t have enough fingers in order to follow them elsewhere.

After half an hour, she sat back and let out a deep breath, throwing her head back to rest on the soft cushion of her couch and rubbing the back of her hand over her forehead. As she moved to take her glasses off, she froze.

“Holy shit.”

Oliver Queen was the vigilante.

\-----

She hadn’t gotten much sleep. She didn’t have the energy the night before to go back and look for Oliver and his bodyguard through more CCTVs and traffic cameras. Starling City was huge and there was no telling where they would’ve disappeared to. Especially since cameras weren’t at every intersection or at every storefront. But she did look for a John Diggle at hospitals and came up with nothing. (She’d done a little more hacking into who the bodyguard was to get a name – a quick mystery solved).

Sure, the man had gotten shot before and was nearby an IUD when it exploded and apparently embedded shrapnel into his leg, but she couldn’t help but wonder if he was okay. His service record was a little tougher to get into…

She was only at work for about an hour before her phone rang.

“Felicity Smoak, IT,” she greeted robotically.

“Ms. Smoak.” Walter’s voice didn’t sound right.

“Mr. Steele, good morning. What can I do for you?”

“I need you to come to my office immediately.”

It was eerily similar to the “we need to talk” moment between couples that always led to a break up. Was she getting fired?

“Sure, I’m on my way.”

For eighteen floors, she ran through everything she’s done, mentally backtracking her not-so-legal hacking to make sure she’d covered her steps and left no trace. As the elevator announced its arrival to the executive level, she squared her shoulders and held her head high.

Fortunately for her, she wasn’t getting fired. Instead, she got a little project from Walter to look into a 2.6 million dollar investment that failed.

For the next day and a half she tracked the money, investigated databases, and decided there was something very wrong with the Queen-Steele family and their secrets.

When she uncovered that Moira Queen purchased a warehouse under the name Tempest she let out a laugh. “Shakespearean family drama? _Oh yeah_ ,” she said to herself.

\-----

Bad days were… bad. This morning when her alarm went off, she wanted to shut it off and go back to sleep. It was hard enough getting up and being around people on a ‘good’ day. Not that it was _good_ but that it was a little easier than some days to come up with the energy to play nice, to force a smile, to not make comments and make herself sound like a raging bitch, to ignore peoples’ bullshit… To not make it seem like the neurological poltergeist was on a rampage and she was getting her lost in her own head.

Today was one of the days where getting up took a lot out of her and her head wouldn’t leave her alone. But she did. She got up, put on her annoying shoes and work clothes before slathering on her bright lipstick (perhaps the bright lipstick was a façade), swallowing her pills, and leaving for another day at work.

She hadn’t expected Oliver to show up again and ask for her help. This time he was accompanied by Mr. Diggle who looked to be in top shape. Or perhaps he was just a better actor than Oliver. Well, she considered, it’s not that difficult.

Felicity was staring absentmindedly out the window and rolling a pen around between her teeth, her thoughts whirling. She startled at the sound of Oliver’s voice.

“Felicity, hi,” he smiled, “do you mind if I steal you away for a couple minutes? I have a favor if you’re not busy…”

Now with her knowledge of Oliver being the vigilante, she was more amused than frustrated by his lies.

“I should get one of those name plates for my desk. It’ll say ‘IT / Applied Science’ and below that ‘Oliver Queen’s Personal Tech Geek’,” she said causing his bodyguard to choke back a laugh. “Oh, calm down,” she admonished at his sigh, “didn’t someone famous say we’re supposed to embrace our true selves or something like that?” she shrugged and opened the laptop.

“I was hoping you could help find a friend of mine,” he started, setting himself down across from her in the empty room while his bodyguard leaned against a table. “One of my close friends who’s seemed to have disappeared; his name’s Derek Reston.”

“No Facebook or online groups for connecting friends who’ve disappeared while on that island, eh?” she quipped.

“Poor boy didn’t even have MySpace,” Mr. Diggle retorted.

She didn’t miss the look Oliver gave him or how he mouthed “boy?” indignantly. She pulled up his financial records and information under various databases.

“Met him at the factory, did you?” she baited.

“Factory?” Ah, there it was again.

“Your father’s steel factory that closed down,” she said. “Reston was an employee before it was shut down and all employees laid off with no severance packages.”

“No severance packages?”

“Legal loopholes. Reston along with about fifteen-thousand other employees lost everything. But there’s been no recent activity on his credit and he doesn’t have any bills of any sort,” she elaborated.

When she looked up from the screen, she saw the dark look he shared with Mr. Diggle.

\-----

She tried to push Oliver to the back of her mind as she typed away at her keyboard. There was something still weird about the Tempest and Moira Queen that left her unsettled. It took a good three hours but she found a single piece of evidence that she was not the only one who’d investigated the transaction. Her extra digging had brought up an image she couldn’t recognize.

But nor could her other program that traced images. Very similar to facial recognition software, it was her own development. Though tonight it failed her.

When she brought it to the attention of Walter, he wasn’t very impressed. Something about not authorizing the search and having her suspended but she only rolled her eyes when she turned around to leave. Overtime was time and a half anyways and the money didn’t hurt.

Not when half of her paycheck went towards her mother, anyway.

Once again she found herself catching the breaking news story of the vigilante’s involvement in the takedown of the Reston family’s robbing spree and the death of the father Derek; taken out by a bullet, not an arrow. They’d been dubbed the Royal Flush Gang by the media. The picture on the news showed the paramedics standing nearby a body covered in a yellow sheet, a hockey mask with a king card a short distance away.

Felicity was unsure of what her reaction should have been. She didn’t trust anyone but she was working hard to give Oliver the benefit of the doubt. Nevertheless, another insomnia ridden night meant she would do some research on his first little while back in town. She easily broke through into the SCPD server and compiled a bunch of records and files on anything having to do with the vigilante.

She familiarized herself with the information until she finally was able to fall asleep for even the short time before her alarm would go off.

\-----

When Walter called her to his office again the next day, she wasn’t fazed.

Tired? Hell yeah.

When she stepped into his office once more, he started speaking.

“Do not worry, Ms. Smoak, I am not firing you,” he assured.

“Oh, I know,” she said confidently.

His brows lifted in curiosity. “And how is that?”

She stopped right in front of his desk and looked him straight in the eyes. “Because you know and I know that it’d be a huge mistake on your part.”

He was silent for a moment, appraising her before he sighed. “Yes, Ms. Smoak, it would indeed.”

“Besides, if you were going to fire me I’d quickly find a job elsewhere whereas, here, I am _not_ as easily replaceable. You should already know, Mr. Steele, that I do not half-ass my job, my work. Empty threats stemming from your emotional upheaval of recent discoveries about your wife do not scare me. My loyalty lies here with you at Queen Consolidated,” she continued.

Walter smiled and nodded. “Again, very true. And I do apologize for my shortness yesterday. But I’ve brought you here for a reason. It concerns my wife and what you brought me last night, that image,” he slid a small brown book across his desk to her. “I would like you to find out anything you can about this. I found it in her possession, but, Ms. Smoak, I must inform you that our head of security investigated it and he was found dead under questionable circumstances.”

Felicity ran her hand along the book before opening it and flipping through the pages which appeared blank. She noticed the now familiar circle with various lines both curved and straight printed on the inside of the cover.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.

She snapped the book shut, the small pressure wave moving the few strands of hair that escaped from the hair tie, and looked at him seriously.

“Absolutely. Mysteries are meant to be solved and I hate mysteries.

Being after hours of normal operation, Felicity immediately went to the new Applied Sciences building which would only have the guards present. Scanning her ID card, she quickly observed the number of guards present. Four in total. Two posted at both doors while the other two walked the floors in fifteen minute intervals.

She wasn’t worried about them. She’s a frequent visitor but due to the matter of the secret book, her privacy would be rather nice.

Felicity started by looking at the cover under a dissecting microscope, looking for anything that might be hidden. Not to mention, a thick hardcover would not be observable under a compound microscope. She was unable to find anything.

She tried to see any pressure marks that would appear when someone wrote on the page or even ones before it. She couldn’t see any with the naked eye or when she tried to use the side of a regular pencil and a regular sheet of paper to see if anything would appear.

Testing a sample of the paper was no lead either. There was nothing fancy about it. It was just like regular paper you’d find in a book. The grain was similar to that of what one would find _Harry Potter_ printed on. Not identical, but not suspicious.

Surely she wasn’t the only one who carried one of them around at all times… She was impatient and a rather fidgety person.

She moved on from the paper to what could have been used to write. She struck using solely pressure out already and decided on invisible ink.

Not just invisible ink like lemon juice but ink that is completely invisible to the naked human eye.

First, she placed the book underneath an ultraviolet light with no success. If it wasn’t the short wavelengths that can completely fuck up your DNA and give you skin cancer, maybe it was the longer wavelengths in the infrared spectrum.

Applied Sciences had developed a pair of glasses with yellow lenses and a red that allowed one to see more than just the visible spectrum. She threw her fist up in the air when she saw the writing.

On every page there was a list of at least six names. She quickly flipped through the pages and noticed every single one was filled.

“Wow,” she murmured.

When she heard the slow, rhythmic footsteps, she quickly tore off the glasses and stashed the book. The guard gave her a quick smile like he had the first four times he passed her and continued on.

She got to thinking again. There was no way that Moira Queen or anyone else with the same book would be able to get ahold of these glasses be it their company or not. There had to be another way to see the ink. She drummed her fingers on the metal bench for a moment before it dawned on her.

The reason things glow when hot or on fire is because that is the end of the visible spectrum for humans.

White hot.

The infrared waves don’t have the same effect as UV waves; instead they make people feel warmth.

She went through instruments in her head. A lighter? It may work but it wouldn’t produce enough heat and would have an easier chance of catching the paper on fire. She down on the table and saw it. A Bunsen burner.

She grabbed the flint and turned on the gas, grinning when she spark lit the flame. It easily produced enough heat.

She flipped to the back of the book and waved it nearby the flame and watched as the names appeared.

“Genius.”

She turned the gas off and grabbed the infrared glasses and the book, opening it to the first page. She quickly copied down the names into her tablet.

There were a few that made her stop when she recognized them. Adam Hunt, Martin Sommers, Jason Brodeur… They were some of the names in the police records she’d dug up the previous night.

These men weren’t just on this list – they were on Oliver Queen’s hit list.


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Re-uploaded. I left something out.

She’d set up alerts on her phone, tablet, and laptop that would come up whenever something to do with the vigilante or the Queen family in general came up on the SCPD server as well as their radio. For the first few days after she got home from work, she would check out her alerts and follow them up. Felicity read through reports of the man who was shot beside Moira Queen and the witness statements and reports that put the vigilante fighting with some woman in a motorcycle helmet.

That’s why she figured she didn’t see Walter at work at one of the big Applied Science meetings. Instead, Moira Queen was acting in his place and she didn’t quite take to Felicity’s input as Walter did; rather she ignored her throughout the entirety of it. She was aware of the surprised glances Mrs. Queen’ would get from the researchers when she’d talk over Felicity’s questions.

Felicity never really liked her in the first place.

However, she was fearful and shaking when she was alerted of a Missing Persons report for one Walter Steele as she started her ignition to go home.

The book.

It had to be because of the book, right? After his warnings about the security guard being found dead…

She tried to strike the thought that Walter was dead from her mind. She dropped her bag on the floor as soon as she stepped in the door of her home and reached for her laptop.

He’d been missing for almost two days before Mrs. Queen filed the report. At the sight of her name, Felicity froze. Was she behind it? Her book of suspicious names was suddenly missing – whatever diabolical business she was in could be the reason Walter was gone.

So she searched. But she came up with nothing. This time, there weren’t any suspicious amounts of money going to an offshore account that could be cause for suspicion, nor was there anything on Walter’s end. Nothing except the book he’d shown Felicity.

The same book that she hid within another book on her shelf. A few days prior, she’d cut a rectangle out of one of her hardback books to provide a small nook to rest something inside. She looked to her bookshelf and stared wearily at the thick Indiana Jones spine before getting up to check that it was still inside.

She let out a breath of relief at the feel and sound of something moving inside but still didn’t trust it without seeing it with her own eyes. But it was there.

Felicity was stress eating a carton of mint chocolate chip ice cream when another alert came up. Businessman Adam Hunt was found dead, an arrow through the heart. Hunt was the second person to report the vigilante – the first being Oliver Queen when he and Tommy Merlyn were kidnapped. She was pulling up the information she’d collected on Hunt when another voice came through the radio saying the arrow was black, not green and Felicity’s eyebrows raised, curious.

\-----

The following day at work was quiet. Felicity was stuck making regular IT rounds since Mrs. Queen’s role shift to CEO had brought down any work she would have for the Applied Sciences division. She’d been reading through the information on Adam Hunt while in the server room that she was startled to attention by Oliver’s “hey”.

“Holy hell, Oliver!” she exclaimed, her hand coming to rest on over her heart as it raced. “Knock, make a noise – something!”

Once her heart beat slowed, she snorted in laughter causing Oliver to squint his eyes at her questioningly.

“You startled me so much I said ‘holy hell’.” At his still unsure look, she elaborated, “I’m Jewish. I mean, I’m not practicing nor do I actually follow the customs because, you know, bacon, but it was just funny. Probably not to you, but I can be amused by even the stupidest things. Like the other day when I spent hours – Never mind. Sorry. What can I do for you?”

This time he brought with him some bullshit about his friend Steve and a cylindrical tube. Said tube containing a black arrow. Just to rile him up a bit, she’d let out a quip about archery being utterly ridiculous, smiling to herself at his indignant humph.

She pulled up the patent information for the arrow on her tablet, amused at the company’s name Sagittarius.

“Can you tell me where and when this specific model was sent to?”

She hesitated momentarily. “Y-Yeah. It shows it was shipped to this warehouse in the Glades,” she jotted down the address for him.

“Felicity, you are quite remarkable,” he smiled, taking the paper from her.

Smiling proudly she replied, “Thank you for remarking on it.”

With only an hour of work left, she stayed in the server room away from everyone else until it was time to leave.

\-----

It was when Felicity stared at the pill bottle for the umpteenth time that evening when she’d made her decision.

She didn’t have much – it was quite similar to how she lived growing up in Vegas with her mother except now she was more comfortable financially. She didn’t have family or friends. Sure, her mother, but she was only family by the fact that she expelled Felicity from her vagina back in the 80’s.

Each day she would come home, mess around on the computer or her tablet, put on a little TV, cook something quick and simple to eat, attempt to go to sleep but not sleep, battle her head, finally fall asleep (hopefully), and wake up and repeat. She kept to herself and she kept quiet.

But she wanted something more.

And now she found her way to do that.

Throwing off her sweats and tank top, she quickly put on black jeans, a black sweatshirt, and grabbed her favorite black and purple Starling City Rockets baseball cap and an old black backpack. She loved black. Unfortunately, her blonde hair was going to be her adversary for recon in the dark.

Well, the blonde hair and the bright red Mini Cooper of hers…

Nevertheless, she made the fifteen minute drive from her house to the Glades a few blocks away from the location she’d given Oliver just a few hours before.

As stealthily as she could, she made her way through the rougher part of the city at near ten o’clock at night grasping mace in one hand and her tablet in the other. The location wasn’t too difficult to find, especially since she had the GPS mapping brought up on the screen of her tablet. When she got there, she did a quick 360 to assess the area. She noticed a few crates about 20 feet away she could hide behind with a good vantage point.

Based on the reports she’d read, there was no set time that Oliver did his “work” except that it was at night so she had no idea when he would show up – even if he would show up at all tonight.

Like before with night research, she found it a benefit to be an insomniac.

It was a very good idea for her to download a few games on her phone and tablet otherwise it was going to be very boring.

It was a good three hours, so about one in the morning, when she heard a noise that wasn’t a cat fight (this time) but instead sounded like footsteps splashing on the wet ground. She quickly turned off the screen of her game, silently cursing his timing for showing up in the middle of a quest that wouldn’t save, and held her breath.

She still hid behind the crates, peaking over them as he threw open the door. As he walked in the door and out of her view, she tried to, again stealthily, move to her left to get him back in her sight. But she was too slow. She saw the door begin to shut on its own accord even though it showed no movement since it banged against the wall when he opened it.

It was a trap.

She ran towards the door and noticed a device at the hinges that forced the door to close. She tried to pull it open but it wouldn’t budge. That’s when she heard a rather loud metallic sound against the door before it blew a second later, followed by a larger one. She tried to jump out of the way of the blast, but a human’s reaction time is too slow; only a tenth of a second. She was hit by small bits of shrapnel from the metal, the force of the pieces easily going through her sweatshirt sleeve and embedding themselves in her arm.

A few feet from her she hears Oliver’s groan and grunt.

“Are you okay?” she asked as she made her way up from the ground toward him.

Almost instantly, Oliver is standing with his bow up and an arrow nocked, aimed right for her heart.

Although said heart jumped, she knew she wasn’t afraid of him, that he wouldn’t actually shoot her.

At least she was pretty sure.

She tried to ignore the burning of up near her right shoulder as she looked him dead in the eyes.

“You know, the police have come up with a name for you,” she said steadily. “’The Hood’. Personally, I’m not too fond of it.”

“What are you doing here?” he growled, his arrow still aimed at her.

“I found that sneakers are true to their name. I mean, I’m not sure why they’re actually called sneakers, but I digress.” Damn her inability to shut up.

“Felicity.” She could tell he was trying to keep the surprise out of his voice as he watched while she let her hair fall from where it was bunched up under her cap as she removed it.

“Oliver.”

He tried to school his features, but it didn’t work so well.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he tried pathetically.

“Cut the bullshit. For once, don’t try and lie to me. I’ve known who you are since day one when you brought me the laptop.”

“You. You were the reason I wasn’t arrested.” It was at that point he finally lowered his bow and returned the arrow to the quiver on his back.

“Wait, you wanted to be?” she asked incredulously.

“That was the plan! I had to throw the police off any suspicion that when a guy comes back from the dead and suddenly there was a vigilante on the loose in Starling City, that they were one in the same.” Uh oh, he was angry. “Did you seriously set up a trap and try and kill me?”

Felicity’s eyes went wide and she held her hands up in surrender. “No! I wouldn’t do that,” she exclaimed. “I tried to get the door to open and I’ve been helping you when you come to me.”

“Then why are you _here_?”

She swallowed thickly. She could feel the panic rise in her chest and the tremors start in her hands. She’d made her decision and it was too late to back out. Surely she could do this without getting close to the guys. One being marooned on an island and coming back with a vendetta and the other a solider – they probably weren’t up for sharing life stories.

She can do this.

She held her head confidently as she spoke. “I want in.”

“No,” he was quick to reply.

“Wait! Please listen. I type up a speech…” She stepped over to her backpack behind the crate quickly to grab her tablet before coming back to him. He sighed, annoyed. “Here!”

She gave him a quick look, noticing his impatient expression before starting.

“You have something to fight for; your city, your family. I’ve been trying to find something to live for, to fight for, for years and I think this is it. You don’t have to worry about anyone around me trying to figure out what’s going on. No one will question late nights or not being home. There is no one for you to lie to on my part. And you need me. And by that I mean you need my genius and my hacking, not me as in _me_ … I swear, I thought I did good keeping out the double entendres; I even proofread it three times so this wouldn’t happen. Shit. Anyways, you’ve already proven you can’t do this without me. From now on, you won’t have to come up with ridiculous lies or show up at QC _. I want in_.”

He only paused for a moment when she was done. “No.”

“Oliver –“

“Felicity, this is dangerous. I can’t –“

“This isn’t about you, Oliver. It’s about me.”

He let out a bitter laugh. “No.”

“I’m practically an honorary member already!”

“I really appreciate your help - you have no idea. But right now, you need to get out of here, the police could be on their way and you keep saying my name. Where are you parked?” He leaned down to grab her backpack off the wet ground and handed it to her.

She was fuming. She angrily grabbed her backpack from him and opened it again, taking out the book from Walter and shoved it in his still extended hand.

“Firstly, this is the Glades. Response time for the police is going to be very slow if at all. Secondly, I wanted to give you this,” she said, not even trying to hide the anger in her voice. “Walter had me look into it. It’s your mom’s. I think it has to do with why he disappeared.”

This time it was Oliver that swallowed thickly. He turned the book over in his hands and flipped quickly through the pages. “How long have you had this?” he asked quietly.

“A few weeks,” she replied, her tone softening slightly.

He nodded and continued to stare at it.

“What are all the names for?” she asked inquisitively.

“I don’t know, I’ve never seen it before,” he answered quickly.

“I told you earlier to cut the bullshit. It’s your hit list, isn’t it? Maybe you haven’t seen the book before, but you’ve seen the names somewhere. The only name not on there is Derek Reston.”

“You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”

“And you’re just full of it,” she retorted.

“You need to go, Felicity.”

She let out an incensed huff and shook her head as she brushed past him. When she got to her car she slammed the door and peeled away but not before catching a glimpse of him watching her leave in her rear view mirror.

It was nearly 2am when she walked through the doors of her townhouse and peeled off her black clothes for her flannel pajama pants and tank top and stepped into the bathroom. Grabbing a pair of tweezers, she tried her best to pull out the bits of metal in her arm before cleaning the wounds and blood with alcohol and wrapping it with gauze and climbing into bed.

She lay there for a minute or so before she could feel the tremors overtake her body and the panic that was creeping in earlier hit her full force as she struggled to breathe. She curled into a ball on her side as the pain in her chest grew until she could feel it move down her arms. She tried to get tighter and tighter as if it would alleviate the sharp pain but it was of no use. When it had subsided, she felt absolutely spent. Her body still shook. An hour later, she fell asleep to the demons in her head.

\-----

Almost two months had passed with few sightings of The Hood. Felicity wondered if it was Mr. Diggle or someone else suiting up and playing vigilante while Oliver rest in the hospital. According to hospital documentation, he’d been cut off by a semi on his motorcycle but Felicity suspected it was just another lie concocted to cover up something to do with his night job.

Another month passed before she got an alert on Moira Queen. As she was walking to her car in the QC parking garage her phone beeped with an alert saying she’d been visited by The Hood and she’d shot him before he got away. She wondered what caused him to go to his mom. Did he find something out about Walter? Was he okay?

The latter was answered when she got in her car and Oliver was in the backseat.

“I hope you don’t mind me saying, Oliver, but your family – your family is all _shades_ of fucked up.”

“Felicity, please,” he wheezed.

“So now because you’re dying, bleeding out in the back of my car you want my help? Stupid billionaires and your tendencies to be massive assholes,” she muttered as she started the ignition. “Maybe I should leave you here, yeah?”

“Queen Steel Factory,” he said.

“When I need you, it’s ‘goodbye, Felicity’ but when you need me... Only when it’s convenient for you, right? You’re turning out like everyone else,” she babbled, pulling out onto the road towards the factory. “’Hey Nerd, do my homework or I’ll shove you in a locker.’ Do you know how many lockers I’ve been shoved into? I’ve been manipulated and bullied all my life and to hell with all of you.”

She felt a little better when she finally got to the factory; her anger from him turning her away dissipated as she put the car in park and opened the door at his head attempting to get him out with no luck. Instead, she patted his leg before he told her Mr. Diggle was to be in the basement.

“One-four-one. Basement. Digg.”

“Okay, please don’t die in my backseat, that’ll be a bit hard to explain.”

Felicity ran through the club, her appreciation for the guise atop the secret lair saved for later, quickly putting in the code and making her way down the stairs where she found herself at the end of the barrel of a gun attached to Mr. Diggle’s hand.

“Please, he’s quite heavy,” was all she said before he rushed to Oliver with Felicity on his trail.

Mr. Diggle’s medical experience in the Army came in very handy as he removed the bullet still lodged between Oliver’s heart and shoulder. It was him that was freaking out when Oliver’s heart started going through fibrillation and needed to shock him.

“C’mon, Oliver’s heart,” Felicity found herself murmuring as she wrung her hands, “Let’s all fire at once, now, okay?” She let out a relieved breath when his heart did as she instructed.

However, it had happened again fifteen minutes later even though she felt his heartbeat at his pulse point on his neck; it was different from what the EKG showed. She held off Mr. Diggle from using the defibrillator again while she checked the internal circuitry of the machine and determined the leads were loose.

In the five hours it took for Oliver to wake up, it was relatively quiet; mostly the sound of the heart monitor and Felicity’s tapping as she worked on upgrading their system.

“I understand he has been sans-new technology for five years but this is just an abomination, Mr. Diggle. You should know better,” she chided.

“Call me Digg. You know, you found out about him being the vigilante before I did,” he said.

Felicity turned in the chair to face him, feeling cocky. “Really? You followed him up the stairs and he walked out with you, I figured you knew.”

He shook his head. “Nope, the next day when I woke up after being poisoned. He’d brought me down here and was in his full get up and asked me to join.”

She harrumphed and crossed her arms, throwing a glare at the unconscious Oliver on the table.

“That ass wouldn’t let me in to your secret group,” she said.

“He told me about you that night. I certainly wasn’t expecting it; neither was he. He _genuinely_ thought he had you fooled and falling for his charm and stories.”

“Yeah, I caught that, too.” She had also caught on to the fact that she felt comfortable, safe in the basement with these two guys – even if one was unconscious after being shot by his own mother. “I was curious about how long he could keep it up though and what crap he was going to come up with next but I got too impatient.

“You know, when he came to me yesterday he wanted me to give him information on the black arrow. He said he wanted to give Steve some of his custom arrows that he orders as he’s quite the archer but he asked me where the shipment was going to not coming from… I don’t even know if he caught it. Surely billionaires could afford to pay for a gift like that rather than going and stealing from their friends stash to regift it to them.”

They turned their heads to Oliver at the sound of a groan falling from his lips. He took a deep breath and turned to see Digg and Felicity approaching him.

“I guess I didn’t die. Again.” He tried to raise his arm as if to pump his fist. “Long live the problem child.”

Felicity snorted and rolled her eyes again. “Well, if the shoe fits, k _iddo_.”


	3. Three

Oliver worked to ignore the throbbing in his shoulder as he sat up on the table, unable to refrain from letting out a pained grunt.

“Now that I’m on the payroll – Wait, this is you bringing me in on all this, right?” Felicity put her hands on her hips, looking at them sternly with her eyebrows raised expectantly. “I swear, if it was just so that I could save your –“

He put a hand out to stop her. “Felicity, you’re in.”

“Good, good. I’d hate to have to turn to angry blackmailing or revenge mode.”

“Blackmailing and revenge, huh?” he heard Diggle ask to his right, ignoring his peering eyes.

She smiled at them innocently.

“Listen, it’s been a long day –“

“Yeah, I’m sure it was seeing as how you slept through the whole thing,” Diggle quipped and shot a wink to Felicity.

At his glare, Diggle held his hands up in surrender while Felicity tried to hide her laugh with a cough. He rolled his eyes. It seemed he would have his hands full with the pair of them.

He sighed. “You two should get home. We can meet back here tomorrow night, say 8 o’clock? We’ve got stuff to go over.”

“Are you planning on dying again?” Diggle asked as he grabbed his jacket.

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed one of Felicity’s eyebrows raise. “I _just_ started and it would suck really hard if you did.”

He shook his head lightly. “Nah. While I’m expecting to crash tonight, I do expect to wake at some point.”

“You can’t ride the motorcycle with that shoulder, Oliver. Get changed and I’ll drop you at the mansion. You shouldn’t avoid your mom even now because it may suspicious. You need to play caring, doting son to his mother who was just affronted by the vigilante.”

Whether in the mood, mentally or physically, or not, Diggle was right.

“Felicity, we’ll walk you out to your car in a minute. There’s an easier entrance to get straight to the basement out into the alleyway that you’ll want to use instead of the front.”

Oliver was still not 100 percent sure of his decision to let her into all of this. Sure, his answer was a little rushed as he’d had no choice but he was still left second guessing if it was the right thing to do. And second guessing wasn’t usual for him. Everything was always calculated and definite; fully researched and understood. But this with Felicity? He wasn’t so sure.

Getting dressed with a bullet wound in the shoulder was no picnic and while he was in intense pain, he preferred not having to ask Diggle to help him put his clothes on and instead grit his teeth through the burning sensation as he pulled a black shirt over his head.

“Is this for me?” Felicity asked when he joined them again, her voice full of awe. “A little something for joining your team? Or perhaps you had anticipated me and Diggle trying to save your life and wanted to give us presents?”

He saw her running her hand along the throttle of his Ducati. “What? No –“

“Thank you, I love it. It’s perfect,” she was still staring at the motorcycle, fixated. “I’ve always wanted one.”

Well, this girl was nothing if not surprising.

“Felicity,” he started, “it’s not for you…”

She frowned and turned to him. “I know, but let me dream,” she said before turning back and examining the rest of the body, reaching her hands out again tracing the seat. “And fondle it.”

Diggle huffed a laugh while Oliver smirked in amusement. She froze and cursed at herself under her breath. “By ‘it’ I obviously meant the motorcycle, not your… _it_ ,” she nodded her head towards his crotch.

“Let’s go,” Diggle said, punching in the code to open the door.

Oliver welcomed the cool breeze that hit him as they made their way outside as it soothed his flushed skin. They made their way to Felicity’s car first and he noticed the dark tinge to the already black seats in the back of her car.

“I’m sorry about the car, I’ll get your seats replaced,” he apologized.

“No can do. I’m leasing the car, I can’t have stuff done like that. It’s not a big deal, it’ll dry and blend in and no one will be the wiser.”

“Let me buy you a new car,” he tried.

“You know I was only kinda, sorta joking with the whole Ducati thing, right? I don’t need you to buy me a new car or replace the seats; I don’t even use them.”

“We should get going, Oliver. You’ll need to take the time to think of a story as to why you’ve been missing for the past six and a half hours.”

Oliver let his head fall back in frustration, immediately grimacing at the feel of his stitches pulling.

“Have fun with that,” Felicity snorted, earning her a glare from Oliver.

“He’s not up for a run on _Whose Line,_ that’s for sure,” Diggle said to her.

She nodded in agreement. “Colin he is not.”

Oliver scoffed, bemused – although (silently) glad they weren’t clashing with each other. Felicity and Diggle certainly got along faster than himself and Diggle. “Definitely a mistake with you two,” he muttered, making his way towards the Bentley parked around back.

“Goodnight, Felicity,” he heard Diggle say. “I’ll give Oliver your number and we’ll see you tomorrow night.”

”Goodnight, Diggle. Goodnight, Jim Bob,” she called as she got into her car.

He turned back to them, a confused expression on his face. Diggle laughed as he approached Oliver.

“Who?” he asked.

Diggle didn’t answer for a moment, instead he watched as she drove away before turning to him. “I like her,” he said simply. “Are you sure we can protect her? That you made the right choice?”

He nodded his head confidently before replying with a less than reassuring, “I hope so.”

For the last couple months he’d been seriously thrown off. Aside from the whole accident and hospital stay fiasco, that is. He hadn’t expected Diggle and he sure hadn’t expected the girl he went to for help a couple of times to completely throw him off balance by her finding out who he really was, least of all confront him in a dark alley after an explosion saying she wanted to be a part of it. That was not part the whole hooded-vigilante-scenario he came up with towards the end of his time on the island.

Diggle had been watching him in the rearview mirror for a few minutes before he broke the silence. “What’s going on, Oliver? Besides, you know, your mother shooting you and you nearly dying.”

“Felicity.”

“Got a little something for our new IT girl?” He held his hands up in surrender at Oliver’s glare. “Alright, alright. But, Oliver, you can’t go back on it now.”

“I know.”

“Then what’s the issue?”

His eyes focused on the corner of the window. “Some things she said back when she was waiting for me at the warehouse. When she was trying to convince me why, she said it wouldn’t be an issue because there was no one to worry about finding out about us, to lie to… And she said it was because she’d been looking for something to live for.”

Diggle sighed. “In this line of work, where we’re out fighting these people, we have each other’s back. You don’t get to just be acquaintances, you become a team. She may not have anyone now but she’s just made herself two someones and she probably didn’t even realize it. It’s inevitable in this situation.”

\-----

Not even one minute into the drive Felicity was already regretting not taking Oliver up on his offer to replace the seats. The unmistakable smell of iron oxide emanating from the backseats was rather potent. Oliver was right; it _had_ been a long day.

A very long day without food.

She poured herself a tall glass of a cheap (yet not completely terrible) red wine to go with her equally cheap microwaved nachos to eat before getting blissfully tipsy and going to bed.

Being it a Saturday, she allowed herself to not wake up after her tenth alarm and instead, as a good night’s sleep was a rarity, slept in until noon. She spent the following seven hours making sure all the information she compiled was properly organized on a memory stick along with her notes, codes, and software for the computers while getting distracted every so often by the Star Wars movie she had going on the TV.

Unfortunately, the smell was still evident in her car as she made her way to the steel factory. She spent the ride reminding herself to speak confidently, keep the innuendos to a minimum, and to not babble.

Of course, all of it was easier said than done.

She tried to take her time driving to the factory as to not seem too desperately eager yet not so that she’d be late.

She ended up arriving with forty minutes to spare. After sitting in the car for only three minutes she noticed the shaking in her hands becoming increasingly more prominent and cursed at them.

“You two are the reason I’m here. Don’t you dare start this crap now,” she said before peering quickly out her windows to make sure no one saw her talking to her hands like a crazy person – not that there should be anyone else in this section of the lot.

She clenched her hands around her steering wheel in an attempt to get her bearings, as if it would slow down her racing heartbeat and stop the swirling in her head that had fallen to her chest.

“No, please. Not now,” she begged.

It was easily ten minutes before her body started to calm and she brought her fists up to her eyes to wipe the tears that inevitably find their way down her face in these sort of situations.

“Four…three…two…one,” she repeatedly counted down from ten when a knock on the window startled her. She jumped in her seat and turned her head to see Diggle leaning down to her window with his gargantuan arms resting on the roof of the car.

She tried to school her face as she rolled down the window.

“H-Hello, Mr. Diggle,” she greeted with a bright smile; hoping her eyes weren’t red and puffy and her face didn’t appear as sweaty as if felt.

“Evening, Ms. Smoak –“

“Felicity,” she corrected.

“Digg,” he countered.

Felicity’s face flushed pink. “Right…”

“So, you want to come in? You’ve been sitting out here for a while and, you know, it always appears more suspicious when you just sit in your car in the empty lot behind the abandoned factory,” he winked.

She shook her head. “Oh, yeah... That makes sense. Sorry.” She shuffled her bag into her lap as she got out of the car so they could make their way to the basement.

“So, tell me about yourself, Felicity,” Diggle prompted.

She tensed up a little bit and clutched her bag tighter to her side, trying to remember to keep her answer short, simple, and unspecific. “Well, I’m from Las Vegas, I went to MIT, I’m 25 years-old, and I work in the IT Department at Queen Consolidated.”

“Why the IT Department with your fancy degrees? Dual Master’s, right?” he asked.

Felicity appreciated that he didn’t sound condescending about it but genuinely curious. At least, it _seemed_ genuine. She wasn’t the greatest judge of when people are trying to take advantage of her or are rude unless it was blatantly obvious. She blamed her lack of social interactions.

“I don’t just work in what people think of as IT. It’s not just the “did you turn it off and back on again?” business but I generally do more advanced things that have me working hand-in-hand with the Applied Sciences divisions. I do things like run diagnostics and carry out tests on types of devices or developing code for them while also doing some of that “regular” department stuff. In fact, when Oliver approached me the first time I had a company computer that froze when the employee was watching a porn video and Oliver was greeted by some hardcore gay porn.” Diggle let out a laugh. “Yeah, I wonder if his wife knows… But, uh, what about you? Bodyguard for the notorious Oliver Queen?”

“He loves it and can’t keep away from me,” Oliver chimed in as they walked inside.

Diggle rolled his eyes. “You know it,” he said sarcastically.

The drained feeling and weakness that remained in her body after her panic attack was slowly easing. She could feel the slight bit of more energy that she attributed to excitement for finally getting her chance at something like fighting the bad guys.

“Me and Digg were talking about how we’re going to do things with you on the team now.” Felicity nodded in anticipation. “Uh, do you know how to scream?”

“Scream as in the musical style or like ahhhhh?” Oliver opened his mouth to respond but Felicity continued as if she didn’t see. “Oh, who am I kidding, I can’t do either,” she said forlornly.

“Okay, we’ll work on that,” Diggle smiled.

Felicity noted he did that a lot. For someone with his army track record, she didn’t expect him to be so… smiley. Oliver, on the other hand, his face was always set to either the stoic for-the-public or fear-me-I’m-a-badass expression but his eyes were a dead giveaway.

As she made her way to the computers her eyes focused in on a small damaged notebook that looked eerily similar to the one she gave Oliver that night. She hesitated her hand over the top before picking it up and quickly flipping through the pages noticing pages missing, wilted by water damage, and a few with names crossed out.

“I knew it,” she said softly, more to herself than to Oliver or Diggle.

The table jarred some as Oliver leaned back against it and crossed his arms.

“I found it on my father when we washed up on shore,” was the only explanation he offered.

“S-So how does this work?”

“Find a target, get information, act on said information,” he said simply.

“Why do they generally end up dead?”

“Sometimes they won’t take heed to the warning.”

She opened and closed her mouth a few times doing quite the impression of a fish before settling on what was in her hands. “I have information gathered about most everyone on the list. At least the most basic stuff like histories, personal information, known associates, and so forth.”

“Good. Did anyone have anything obvious standing out?” Diggle asked.

“There were five that showed things like embezzling and counterfeiting but generally they were pretty good covering their tracks on the digital side. A few had large payouts every month that I wouldn’t account to anything on the legitimate business side. Those payouts went through a bunch of routed servers and then disappeared,” she tapped away on the keyboard as she spoke, bringing up the files on the memory stick.

Diggle pointed at one of the names on the screen that Felicity had flagged.

“What’s up with this guy?”

“James R. Babineaux: former politician who tried running for mayor of Starling back in the 70’s. He was the guy I found embezzling money from the Starling City Children’s Hospital charity fund. It was like he wasn’t even trying to hide it,” she scoffed. “I thought he was right up your alley. Besides being in the book, that is. It’s my understanding stealing from children – or generally just crimes that involve children – are a big no-no pretty much everywhere.”

Before she could back out, she kept talking. “And, listen, I was thinking maybe instead of just going after names we can also go after other bad guys. Like how you did with that Reston-card-mask people. We can do more good rather than just settle this vendetta you’ve got with the book.”

Oliver’s voice was menacing, a completely one-eighty from a few moments before. “Don’t act like you understand why I started this. And there are some things you should know, Felicity: one, don’t forget you asked me to join so don’t forget your place; two, when things are done, they’re done my way, when I say, how I say; and three, there is no ‘we,’ there’s an ‘I’ –“

“Watch it, Oliver,” Diggle interrupted.

Oliver’s arms swung wide in a defensive stance and his body grew even more rigid. “And now you’re going to back-up her uprising here too?”

Felicity’s heart was hammering in her chest, going for round two. “I’ve made a mistake.”

“For coming in here and trying to take over and change everything? Yeah, you sure as hell did.”

Diggle was standing back against a pillar with his arms crossed as he watched the two argue.

“No, not for trying to overthrow your regime in this, as I’ve now learned, dictatorship, but for thinking you were better than the guy who pissed on a cop and would be open to suggestions and not belittling people who don’t see your way. Yes, I asked to join but don’t lie to yourself, Oliver, the three of us all know you’d be nowhere without me after you came to me multiple times needing my help.”

She caught Diggle’s agreeing nod out of the corner of her eye and her confidence level increased which was easily deflated a second later.

“Wrong again, Felicity. I don’t need you,” Oliver said with finality before turning away and shedding his shirt which was apparently necessary in order to fight an immovable pole with more rods sticking out of it.

Felicity pressed her lips together, her breathing becoming more and more shallow as she stood stationary. It was when she saw Diggle making his way towards her that she sullenly grabbed her bag, ignored his plea for her to stay and ignore the “grumpy asshole,” and walked out the door.

\-----

“Dammit, Oliver!” he heard Diggle roar followed by the bang from a fist slamming on the table.

His own pounding on the wing chun dummy echoed through the basement, his frustration coming off in waves and ebbing ever so slightly with each strike he landed that granted him a bit of a sting on his flesh. He grunted in response.

“What the hell, Oliver? What happened to being a team in this?”

His arms stopped moving as he glared at Diggle with his chest rising and falling with brisk breaths.

“She doesn’t get to come in here and start trying to change everything. That’s not what she was brought in for,” he growled.

Diggle huffed. “Did you really expect that woman to come in here and just bend over for you? The same woman who went after the vigilante at night and nearly got blown up only to stay there and tell you she wanted to be a part of it.”

Oliver scowled at the implication. “No.”

“Why can’t you accept that there is more bad out there than just what’s in your book? We could be doing more than taking down just these businessmen –“

“Don’t you start now, Diggle.”

“No, I will start. Felicity is right, Oliver. The bad in this city doesn’t end with those names and maybe we could be the ones to take care of that. This is what a team does, Oliver. They work _together_. And you’re kidding yourself if you really think we don’t need her.”

Oliver grumbled.

“What?”

“I said I know!” Oliver yelled exasperatedly.

“Looks like you’ve got some groveling to do,” Diggle smirked.

Throwing his shirt back on, Oliver swiped his phone from the desk and sent off a short text to Felicity as he sat in the chair at the computers.

_I need your help._

A few short seconds after the text sent off he and Diggle heard the door opening and in walked Felicity.

“What’s up?” she greeted the two gobsmacked guys who thought she was long gone. “I was just outside waiting for you to un-wedge your underpants from its ascent up your butthole. Assuming you’re wearing any but I really only meant it as a figure of speech so I guess whether you’re going commando or not really doesn’t matter.” She closed her eyes counted down from three, when she opened them again she saw Diggle’s amused expression and Oliver’s still flabbergasted one. “Where do we start?”


End file.
